


Treading Water

by butterflycell



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Star Trek: Into Darkness, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-07 11:14:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6801448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butterflycell/pseuds/butterflycell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They all make it through, somehow. Jim starts to heal, the rest of the crew starts to mend and, slowly, it gets to a point where they're all just holding their breath, waiting to be put back into space.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Treading Water

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a while since I wrote and posted anything, so I wanted to put something out into the world. It's a little raw, but I kind of like that.

They all make it through, somehow. Jim starts to heal, the rest of the crew starts to mend and, slowly, it gets to a point where they're all just holding their breath, waiting to be put back into space.

Forget something small, testing the waters and the tenuous scar tissue still so evident throughout the ship, they're given the five year mission and Leonard watches as Jim sits on the couch, head bent over his PADD, fists clasped and pressed hard to his mouth. Leonard likes to think that he can see Jim's thought process running through his head, but he's not so sure.

When Jim puts his finger to the screen and scans in his print, accepting and authorising his commission, something in the air bends and breathes a little. Leonard's orders come in a few days later. He'd been listening to Jim run through his crew list, letting him bounce around ideas and concerns, helping where he could. He knew he'd get a commission the moment Jim signed his own, if for no other reason than the fact that Jim didn't like change, and liked doctors even less.

They'd been sharing an apartment on the edge of the city over the last year, two bedrooms, a balcony, easy access to a small park. At first, it had been a matter of practicality. Down town and the academy were, and still are, in the midst of massive structural repairs, and Jim was only able to be released from the hospital on the condition of observation. He'd been cleared a few months previously, but by that point, they were in a strange, comforting kind of holding pattern.

Leonard never mentions his nightmares, because by this point, they're aren't all that alarming.

The whole crew had been put through mandatory psych evaluations and counselling, but that's only so effective when you have to see over four-hundred people in the same few months. So Leonard had passed his eval and taken on a share of the work. Helping other people process would be a lot more efficient for him than talking about it anyway. It wasn't too hard to get Starfleet to conveniently look the other way on his therapy when he was offering life-support to a dying institution.

So Leonard works through the low level discomfort, doesn't talk about how little sleep he really gets anymore, and he signs his five year commission whilst Jim grins at him and tells him drinks are on him.

The excitement of the mission begins to wane once they hit the third week, once everyone settles into roles and assignments and all the initial flurry of work begins to slow down. Leonard goes about his business, has drinks with the others, berates people for doing stupid things - always keeping his medbay primed for anything.

At some point, he's not entirely sure when exactly, Jim starts bringing the drinks round to Leonard's quarters, and drinks turn into crashing over night, turns into a spare uniform for Jim sitting in the top drawer. The couch in his room isn't the most comfortable, and there's room enough for two on the bed. They'd done this before, in the academy, after exams, after flight training, after Nero. All Leonard really thinks about it, and only in passing a month or so after it's more or less permanent, is that he's glad the night terrors don't come around so often anymore.

It starts to feel more like it did the last time, before Nibiru and the shitstorm that came along on its heels. Jim's more sedate these days, but adventure is written all over him, like lay lines.

For the most part, it all holds together for the first away mission. The crew is energised, their first sign of something more than empty blackness. It's a geological survey on an uninhabited planet. Then there's a landslide. Whilst his stomach leaps and churns when he first hears it, Leonard isn't actually all that surprised.

No-one is majorly hurt – a few bruised bones, a couple of wounds to seal up. Jim sits on the bed in front of him with a grin and a gash above his ear, blood flow slowed down to an ooze. Leonard scowls and rolls his eyes, makes sure he acts exactly how Jim would expect him to, because if he can stop Jim from paying too much attention, he won't be able to see the way Leonard's right hand is shaking with an uncontrollable tremor.

He finishes his shift and has a glass of bourbon to unwind. Jim kisses him for the first time when he comes in for the night. They kiss, they fall asleep together and they get up in the morning for their shifts as usual. After that, it becomes something of a routine.

The tremor doesn't happen again for a while, but then there's a series of explosions in engineering and Leonard is having to treat Scotty and his team for mild radiation exposure and burns. He flexes his hand in and out of a fist a few times to shake it off as he prepares the medication for the team, all of them sitting in quarantine and glaring at him through the screen. He tells them to stop whining and administer the hypos to their necks if they want to get out of there any time soon.

The ship gets attacked on the edge of federation space two weeks later and Jim leads a security team across to the enemy ship. They take them down and stop the attack on the Enterprise. Jim is beamed directly onto a bed set up for surgery in the medbay. Leonard takes one look at him, gored and drenched red from his own insides and gets to work.

His mind shuts down everything but muscle memory and medical knowledge as he pieces the man on the table back together. He makes M'Benga use the laser scalpel because he acknowledges that there was a very real possibility that he could do irreparable damage. His hand had started shaking again less than an hour in.

They get Jim's pulse going again, get it steady and thrumming and strong, and then he can work to pull and push everything back into it's proper place. It takes hours, but by the time he's telling Chapel to get Jim to a private area the red alert has been called down to a yellow. He goes to his office to clean up, write his report, debrief Spock. The he signs himself off on medical leave.

Leonard may been stubborn, but he's not a fool.

He goes to sit with Jim for a while, holding his hand lightly, keeping an eye on his vitals. Something like panic in his chest makes him want to cry, like he's sitting by the bedside in Starfleet Medical again, waiting to see if he'd ever wake up again. He does what he's done all year and pushes it away, focuses on the facts. He focuses on the warmth of Jim's hand in his own and the flicker of his eyes behind his eyelids.

He feels the tremor again and squeezes Jim's hand to stop it for a moment. Then he gets up and leaves with only cursory nods to Geoff and Christine. They'll have his back for tonight.

For a while, he sits on his bed, the sheets smoothed out from where Jim had made them that morning. His eyes are dry and he scrubs at them with his hand briefly before he starts to look at his options. He's so tired from too many nights of too little sleep. He supposes this had to happen sooner or later.

He has no purpose on this ship, not if he can't be trusted to provide treatment in emergency situations. He's supposed to be a trauma surgeon. You can't be a trauma surgeon if you can't control your hands. He can't keep Jim alive if he can't be a trauma surgeon.

Leonard knows it's psychological, knows he had a clean bill of health when he was cleared for duty. He knows its about Jim dying, and he wouldn't be surprised if being on the ship again is stirring up his subconscious where the corpses are dislodged and floating on the surface. He covers his right hand with his left, feeling it trembling against his knee.

Jim.

The sensible thing, the thing he'd say if it was a patient and not himself, would be to transfer off the ship, to go back to terra and confront what happened. But life goes on, and that means the Enterprise continues on its mission. It means leaving Jim to go out into the black alone, where Leonard can't check his pulse in the middle of the night or make sure he doesn't fall asleep at his desk.

Because Leonard knows that Geoff would keep him alive – he trusts his own life in Geoff's hands, so logically he trusts him with Jim. But Jim is _his_ to protect, and he can't quite get his head around the idea of not being the one to put him back together time after time, in whatever way necessary.

Only, his hand is still trembling, hours later, and he knows he can't just pretend it isn't happening.

When his daddy died and Jocelyn changed the locks, he spent five months drinking himself into oblivion until Pike found him and made him face up to the fact that his life wasn't the same anymore. Leonard had always been an expert in denial. Maybe it was time for him to finally take some responsibility for himself.

So he pushes himself up and into motion, starts packing a duffel with the few possessions he would want to take with him. He leaves behind a couple of tshirts and the quilt his momma made him, because Jim had taken them as his own. He pulls the quilt up to his face and breathes it in – and it dislodges something in his chest and he feels himself start to cry.

His grief threatens to overwhelm him and he is so exhausted.

He wouldn't leave without talking to Jim, so he kicks off his boots and collapses down on the bed. He doesn't fall asleep easily, but when he eventually does, it's unusually deep. He thinks he wakes a little at some point, but nothing is very clear.

When he wakes up, Jim is shuffling around the room. Leonard heart lurches for a moment before he notices a tell-tale fuzziness around his brain of a sedative in his system. He only half remembers Geoff's voice at some point in the middle of the night, telling him he was fine, that he was safe, that Jim was doing well. He moves to get up, and Jim is at his side and easing him up, sitting close enough that their knees are pressed together.

“Easy.” Jim mutters, a hand to Leonard's back and he can't quite believe the situation.

“Why the hell did M'Benga release you?” He growls, studying Jim clinically, a hand reaching instinctively for Jim's wrist to take his pulse. It's strong and even and he half notes the smile on Jim's face at the motion.

“He cleared me for bed rest a few hours ago. You've been out for two days.” Jim's hand moves absently against his back.

“How long of that was a sedative?” He raises an eyebrow but Jim doesn't look even remotely apologetic.

“When was the last time you actually slept through the night?” Leonard looks away. He can't answer the question. Jim is silent for a moment before opening with a non-sequitor. “Do you know why I moved myself in here?”

“Because you're never happier than when you're invading my space?” He jokes, but Jim shrugs.

“Pretty much. I didn't like finishing my shift and going back to my room. When I finish work, I want to hang up the 'Captain' and be 'Jim'. I couldn't do that there.” Jim peels Leonard's hand from his wrist and holds it instead. “I read the report, but I don't understand.”

Leonard doesn't know what to say, doesn't know how to verbalise it. Instead he raises his right hand, not surprised to find it trembling and twitching. He feels the panic start to rise again in his chest when Jim doesn't say anything.

“I never dealt with what happened to you.” It feels like the darkest of confessions, but it also feels right to say it aloud. Jim reaches out to snatch his shaking hand between his own as if that would get rid of it for good.

“How do we help you?” His face is soft and earnest, a new kind of Jim that Leonard had been getting to know over the past few months. He tightens his hand around Jim's and swallows.

“I need to talk to someone, Jim.” He sighs and holds on, because now Jim's here, he needs him to stay.

“I already unpacked your bag, and I'm not packing it back up again until you say it's the only way.” The hand on Leonard's back moves up to his neck, cradling, comforting and holding him steady. Leonard wants to slump into him and give in, just for a few moments, until he remembers that he puts Jim's insides back together two days ago. “Would you talk to M'Benga? Should we bring someone else on board?”

“I could talk to Geoff.” Leonard's brain starts churning thoughts uncomfortably, but Jim's fingers at the back of his head anchor him in the room.

“If you give that a try, for now? Give me a month, Bones. We can talk it over again then.” Jim's face is so open, so earnest and Leonard feels _so_ grateful in that moment, so he just nods and Jim's face lights up. He leans in and Leonard lets himself be kissed.

The tremors in his hand have stopped for the moment, and he's glad for that.

“I love you, Bones. You know that, right?” Jim's face has dropped a little when he pulls away, but Leonard manages a nod.

“Of course I do.” Leonard studies his face for a moment. “I love you too.”

And after that Leonard takes control of the situation, putting Jim to bed with a PADD for company, berating him half-heartedly for giving Geoff hell. Leonard finds some work to keep him busy, keep his brain ticking over and his hands occupied, until he can't deny Jim's whining anymore. He lets Jim manhandle him into the bed and into his space, surrendering himself happily.

“If you wake up tonight, I want you to let me know.” Jim says quietly, hand pressed to Leonard's stomach.

Leonard makes himself promise, because what else is the point if not Jim? But a few hours later, when he rolls over to shake away the cobwebs of the last nightmare, he can't help but hesitate. Too many thoughts churn over themselves, so it's long, long minutes before he wraps an arm round Jim's waist and presses his face to the back of his neck.

But Jim's hand moves to cover his before he turns in Leonard's loose grip and pulls him close.

It doesn't stop the nightmares, but it makes them a little easier.

 

 

 


End file.
